How to Boost Your Metabolism & Burn Fat

**Andy Galpin** (0:00)
The science and practice of enhancing human performance for sport, play and life. Welcome to Perform. I'm Dr. Andy Galpin. I'm a professor and scientist and the executive director of the Human Performance Center at Parker University. Today's episode, we're gonna be talking all about how to boost your metabolism. The reason I chose this is because of all the topics in the entire space of human performance. This probably has the most discussion among pop culture. You see it everywhere. Supplements, diets, magazine covers, boosting metabolism, boosting metabolism, speed up your metabolism is one of the most popular topics, yet because of that, it's also fraught with misinformation, with outright lies. And so how do you understand what's going on? In preparing for this show, I asked a lot of my friends, many of which have PhDs in the field, master's degrees, registered dieticians.
And I just simply asked them, can you speed up your metabolism? And I never got a straight answer. Nobody I talked to confidently was able to tell me, yes, you can, or no, you can't. And so I was really excited to do this topic and break that down for everyone, because the reality of it is, we have a lot of science here. There are some extremely clear cut answers about whether or not you can even have a fast or slow metabolism. The reality is, you can't. Your metabolic rate and my metabolic rate are not necessarily different. But despite that, there's over a dozen different scientifically documented ways in which you can enhance your metabolism. We have learned very recently a lot of information about what explains why some people can do things like eat more calories, eat more food, but yet not gain as much weight as you. That is a real phenomenon. Even when all other variables are controlled for that can happen.
But that's not explained by having a faster or slower metabolism. And so these topics and many, many more are what I'm going to get into in today's show. And I know that when you leave the episode, you will know much more about how metabolism works, what it really is, and exactly what to do to enhance it if you so please, or so would like to do that, and what the true state of the literature says on enhancing, boosting or speeding up your metabolism. As always, we're going to tackle this problem by covering the three I's. Investigate, interpret and intervene. So by investigate, we'll walk through really quickly how to get this tested or measured. If you're interested in learning more about this, what are some of the high end ways the most scientifically supported, all the way down to low or moderately low cost and all the way down to free if we can. From there, I will talk about how to interpret those data. How do you know whether you're slow or fast or high or low or where it should be based on your age and sex and other factors that are important. But we're going to spend most of our time on the third eye, which is I will cover what we know scientifically about what works and what doesn't work. We'll get into exactly how much it works. So what's the magnitude of effect? How much will it raise my metabolism by and for how long? After that, we'll talk about the specific details of the protocols, if you will. So what to take? How long? What dosage? What timing? And so on and so forth in the case of, say, supplements or food. We'll talk about other factors, including, but not limited to things like the temperature, water intake, spicy foods, types of exercise, sleep protocols, and so forth. The reality of it is, we have a lot of different options from the lifestyle, from environmental, from food and supplementation that give you the ability, potentially, to increase your metabolic rate. We're going to finish the episode by going over what I call a couple of case studies, in which I give some sample combinations of these factors that I have used and do use in the folks I work with to effectively enhance metabolic speed in a long-term, successful, adherent fashion. So things that are going to be not just giving us a short bump, a short-term effect, but something that is long-lasting and sustainable over time. So to get us started, the first thing we have to talk about is what we're even talking about. These terms, as I open up the show with, are maligned. They're confusing, and that's in large part, and often is the case, just because of simple miscommunication. I'm going to keep it brief. I know in the past, and I love to talk at length about the physiology, what's happening at the cellular level. I'm not going to do much of that today, but I do need to explain the different parts, because as you'll see the episode unfold, we're going to talk about how each intervention or protocol or thing that you can do influences each area of metabolism. It's really important that you do something that covers all four of the major areas so that you have the most likelihood of improvement. We have to know what those areas are and then roughly what they mean. I promise, though, I will keep it very brief. By that, I mean it's Galpin style, but it will still be brief for me. Now, some of you might be thinking here, I'm not incredibly interested in fat loss or metabolism. Maybe you're already lean and you're lean no matter what, or you don't work in the area or with clients who care that much about fat loss. So you might be thinking to yourself, this episode isn't for me. I'm just going to sort of tune out. I'm going to try to caution you against that for a couple of reasons. One, you're going to care about your long-term metabolic health, and this is highly tied to that. And so, just because the fact that you're lean now doesn't mean you always will be lean. In addition, if you do want to continue to stay lean, you need to keep this engine revved up as high as possible for as long as possible. And so, we're going to cover exactly how to do that from what we know scientifically in today's discussion. The second thing is what I call the higher delta. So, let's imagine a scenario in which you consume and burn exactly 2,000 calories per day. So, you're net equal. And at that, you keep the exact same level of muscle and energy and recovery and performance and body fat and so on and so forth. If I could do that exact same thing at 4,000 calories, now I've got much more options. What I mean by that is if I can keep you at the exact same for all those variables, at double the caloric load, I've got a greater ability to increase my food intake, which means my micronutrients go up. If I eat double the food, I get double the vitamins and minerals and nutrients and fiber intake. And if I'm staying at the exact same body composition, body mass, that is a huge advantage. Additionally, it now becomes far easier to lose weight if you ever want to do that. One of the things that makes it really hard for weight loss, if your metabolism is quote unquote slow, again, think that total input versus output is low, say 2,000, and you want to drop it by, say, 500 calories, you've reduced a significant portion of your caloric intake. You're going to feel that. You've dropped a quarter of your calories. However, if you're at 4,000 calories, turn and burn, and we drop you by 500, now we've only lowered your intake by a small percentage. And so you don't feel that much of a difference. You won't really feel 3,500 calories versus 4,000 calories, but you'll feel 15 versus 2,000, even though in both cases it's exactly 500 calories. And so for a lot of people, there is still a huge interest in understanding and making your overall metabolism function how you want for both the short and long term, regardless of whether or not body composition or body fat is your primary, secondary, or even of slight interest to you right now. Now I can continue talking about that delta and why you want to avoid energy toxicity, but you do at the same time want to have a high caloric intake. But we'll save those thoughts for another conversation. We want to get really into today's topic. And so what does speeding up your metabolism even mean? And I've been using a bunch of different terms thus far on purpose. I've tried to throw out misconceptions. I've used the wrong phrase intentionally, because that's how it's used colloquially. That's probably how you've heard it and that's how you've thought about it. So I've done that with direct intent there. We're going to talk about what those things mean. We're going to talk about what it actually means to have a fast or slow metabolism. And so let's get into those very basic parts right now. Scientifically, metabolism is the net of all cellular processes in your entire body. So when you're metabolizing hormones or proteins or energy substrates like carbohydrates and fat, all of that is combined together to make up your metabolism. So that is a giant net. It is not specifically and only referring to the calories in versus calories out, what you're burning for exercise or your body fat composition. It is all things going on. That is an incredibly difficult number to come up with. It is not a rate. It is a total amount. What I mean by that is it's not a speed. This is why I can tell you people in our field, and mind you, I've got a PhD in human bioenergetics. So people in this field will tell you there is no speed component here. It is a total rate component. And so the analogy I'll give you here is a car, okay? Now, if I had you driving in your car at 50 miles an hour, and we increased you to 70 miles per hour, your speed went up, right? When people think about boosting their metabolism, that's what they think happens. I'm driving faster. And when we say you don't speed up your metabolism, when I tell you yours is the same speed as mine, what I mean is we're all driving at 50 miles per hour. But at the same time, I also did tell you we can raise it and that there are some people who can handle more energy and not gain as much and so forth. That's not a speed issue. What that is, is the total amount of drive time, right? It is not speeding up your metabolism. It is going through metabolism more frequently. That's effectively what's happening. So it's driving more often. If you drive more often, let's say again, the analogy of speed here, we're both driving at 50 miles per hour, you don't speed up or slow down. But I drive for one mile and you drive for 15 Who burned more gas? You did. That's exactly what we're talking about. So somebody with a fast metabolism is someone who's simply driving for 15 miles and someone with a slow metabolism is somebody who's driving for five miles, or two miles, or whatever the case may be. That is incredibly important because as we start getting into claims in the field and misconceptions and improper marketing, they're going to use those things as tricks and ways to twist you. So, easy examples, there's plenty of supplements that you can take that will, quote unquote, speed up your metabolism. They will turn it on. They will get you going. But they do not result in any additional fat loss for mechanisms in which we will cover later. And so, understanding the very basic principle there lets you realize, okay, great, they can make a certain claim there. But in reality, what I'm trying to hear is that product will help me lose fat more, and that will not be the case. That is often what we see and have historically heard in the magazines, in the media, with the supplement companies and so forth, regarding speeding up your metabolism. So now that you understand that, you're not going to fall prey to that trick again. So here's what we really mean. When people say, I want to faster metabolism or my metabolism is slow. And so they say, my metabolism is too slow or I want it to go faster. What are they really saying? They're generally talking about body composition. I hate to phrase it this way. I didn't want to do it because there's so much more to metabolism than just body comp. But again, this is a very easy entry point for us. So we'll stay here just so most people can understand. So when they're saying that my metabolism is slow, what they're usually saying is a comment about their body composition. They have more fat than they would like. It's hard for them to lose fat. It's hard for them to gain muscle or the opposite. Someone who complains of a fast metabolism is somebody who's having a hard time gaining muscle. I eat and I eat and I eat and I just can't gain. I eat and I eat and I just can't gain. So there's complaints on both sides of the equation. Example here, just to give you some math. Let's say both you and your friend eat 1,500 calories a day. And let's say we live in a magical universe and stress and sleep and all that is all equated for. The only difference between you, you both had 1,500 calories per day for 8 weeks. One of you loses 3 pounds, the other loses 12 pounds. That is a real thing. That can and does happen. It's easy then for you to think, okay, metabolism fast, metabolism slow. So what's really happening there is a change in what we call TDE, or total daily energy expenditure. When you hear the phrase fast and slow metabolism, or the phrase is, I want you to think total daily energy expenditure. Now, that has 4 unique components, and I'll cover it in 1 second. But the reality of it is, what could be explaining that person who lost more weight than you did or didn't gain as much, whether you're in a caloric surplus or caloric deficit, it doesn't matter.